Teaching Limits to Enhance Creativity: The Pedagogy of Degrowth

BY LUIS I. PRÁDANOS Every time I mention the obvious in a classroom—that most industrial economic activities deplete energy and materials and, therefore, constant economic growth in the context of a limited biosphere is a biophysical impossibility—I am moved by some students’ honest reactions. Their response will be some variation of “That makes sense. Why did nobody tell us before that as the global economy grows, the living systems of…

‘Just Ask’

BY PAT BOWNE David Brooks apparently hit a nerve with his sandwich column. My friends’ reactions on social media ranged from stories about their own discomfort in fancy restaurants to comments about food snobbery to accusing me of wanting the right-wing PC police to stop us all from eating kale. Perhaps the commonest remark I…

AFT President Critiques DeVos “Choice” Agenda

POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN It was a tale of two speeches.  Yesterday, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos addressed the right-wing American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC) meeting in Denver, where she accused teacher unions of being “defenders of the status quo” who care only about “school systems” and not about individual children. Just hours earlier Randi…

From College to High School

BY GILLIAN STEINBERG When I tell people that I left a tenured university position to teach high school, most suggest that I’ve taken a significant step backwards. But with so many college teachers either underemployed or feeling desperately pressured, more might want to consider the switch to high school teaching.  High school teaching is not,…

Student Agency

BY AARON BARLOW In the weeks after the Kent State killings in 1970, I grew increasingly perplexed and withdrawn. My campus—I was attending Utica College in upstate New York—shut down and students seemed triumphant. Triumphant, that is, in the matter of standing for a moment on center stage. But I was unhappy. For it wasn’t…

President Rudy Fichtenbaum’s Remarks at the 2017 Annual Meeting

  I believe that this is the 5th time that I have had the honor of addressing this body in my capacity as President of the AAUP. Let me start by thanking our wonderful staff. Without their hard work and dedication to our cause, we would cease to exist. While I cannot name and thank…

Survey Responses from STEM Educators Needed

POSTED BY KELLY HAND Dr. Anne Lucietto, of Purdue Polytechnic Institute, is a researcher in STEM education. She is in the preliminary stages of a project concerning educators, especially STEM educators and their experience teaching STEM students. She is requesting that educators at any level—K-12, undergraduate, or graduate—take the survey, which covers three areas: demographics,…

chalkboard with an eraser perched on a chalkboard

Seeking Authors for Chapters in Book on Teaching Social Justice

BY SARAH BURNS GILCHRIST ABC-CLIO has shown interest in my proposal for a collaborative publication focused on teaching Social Justice in the classroom. They would like to have a list of interested co-authors (in the form of a Table of Contents) before they grant a contract. The deadline for manuscript submission will be April 10th,…